Sun-Herald senior writer

No closed shop: Sharon Zeev Poole, in her Surry Hills office, is a firm believer in open plan work spaces. Photo: Janie Barrett

Nine out of 10 offices in Australia are open plan, but while managers think the design is great for saving money and fostering collaboration, many workers complain they are noisy, distracting and lack privacy.

New Swedish research found open plan offices also make workers sicker than the private offices of old, with women particularly at risk.

A Stockholm University study of nearly 2000 workers found their office layout had a ''significant'' bearing on the amount of sick leave they took. Employees in open plan offices were the most likely to have taken days off. And when it came to extended bouts of sick leave, women in large open plan offices were far more at risk than workers in private offices, while men who were hot desking tended to record the highest number of total annual sick days.

''The evidence indicates that traditional open plan offices are less good for employee health,'' said the researchers whose study was published in the latest edition of Ergonomics.

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They suggested the risk of infection could be higher among people sharing a workspace and that workers in open plan offices were more exposed to environmental stress agents such as noise.

The Swedish findings support earlier research that shows people in open plan offices are more likely to have elevated stress levels, higher blood pressure, get the flu and struggle with the lack of privacy.

Managers have increasingly embraced open plan offices, claiming it promotes more communication and collaboration among staff, while at the same time reducing building costs by as much as 20 per cent.

Yet a University of Sydney study found the disadvantages for employees far outweigh the benefits.

The survey of 42,000 workers in the US, Finland, Canada and Australia found open plan offices scored ''considerably low'' for satisfaction of visual privacy, noise and space. Meanwhile, workers in open plan offices were not any more satisfied than those in private offices with the ease of interaction with colleagues.

The University of Queensland Business School and Melbourne Business School are developing a training program for managers to get the most out of employees working in open plan layouts. Researchers are surveying employees in open plan offices about their productivity, wellbeing, conflict, performance and satisfaction with support, and are being split into different personality types.

''Managers put 20 people in the same spot and basically constrain them to work together without considering they have different personalities, different values and they work differently,'' project leader Remi Ayoko said.

Preliminary research by Dr Ayoko's students Aurelia Connelly and Natalya Monaghan showed open plan offices often bring out territorial behaviours in people who find them stressful, which in turn can create conflict with other employees who view their behaviour as selfish.

''Some people who work in open plan get territorial,'' Dr Ayoko said. ''It helps people work through stress when they're protective of their environment. They express themselves in ownership of place, they bring in photos and pot plants that depict who they are. The more they feel at home, the more productive they are.''

Sharon Zeev Poole designed her Agent99 public relations agency office as open plan when she set it up five years ago.

''For a creative industry like PR you need to bounce ideas off colleagues and open plan allows for that,'' she said. ''You can communicate with colleagues easily rather than in a very strict manner.''

All the staff have personalised their workspaces with pictures and plants and the Surry Hills office has a mezzanine level and break-out areas to allow for client meetings.

Hot desking and design can spread serious disease at work

Health workers have blamed an open plan office and hot desking for the spread of tuberculosis at a Victorian business.

According to a report published in the Medical Journal of Australia, the 34-year-old male chief of staff in the large open plan office was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

The Victorian Department of Health was notified and screened the man's family, friends and 89 of his work colleagues. A quarter of the man's co-workers tested positive for tuberculosis, and when those who had previous exposure to the disease had been discounted, 10 per cent tested positive. Of these, two had used the same desk as the chief of staff.

Health workers concluded ''workplace transmission had occurred in this group'', and suggested the design of the office was partly to blame for the spread of the disease.

''There were several factors in the workplace design that may have contributed to transmission, including a closed air-conditioning system, modern open-plan office design . . . that allows people to see and communicate directly with their colleagues without standing, and the practice of hot desking,'' they said. The delay in the infected man being diagnosed also meant his colleagues were exposed to the disease for six weeks.